First Chapter | Emerson

A true story.

I See the Light

A strange, persistent feeling followed me for months. It was like a subtle static in the background of my life that I couldn't quite name. Like the static charge in the air before a lightning strike, humming just beneath my skin, a quiet urgency that made the familiar world feel increasingly thin, as if it was permeated with deep meanings I couldn’t quite grasp. But then, it happened.

It was an ordinary night, a cold January night. One of those nights where the silence is so heavy you can hear the blood pulsing in your ears. Every object in the room felt pinned down by it. I was at my computer, alone. The only light came from the screen, a blank page staring back at me, mocking my inability to write.

My mind was restless, but my body was still. I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol or anything else for months. Yet, despite my sobriety, despite my sharp awareness, every creak in the walls, every hum in the computer, I felt something shift. Then, I heard it. A voice. Clear, unwavering, as if someone stood right behind me, whispering into the space between my thoughts.

"Do you trust me?"

It wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t my own mind playing tricks on me.

The voice had weight, presence.

It existed.

A cold wave ran down my spine, but I didn’t feel fear. Instead, there was a pull, something deep within me responding before I even had the chance to doubt. I turned, instinctively expecting to see someone in the room. But there was no one. Only me, the glow of the screen, and the emptiness of the night.

And yet, I was not alone. I looked back at the blank page, my fingers hovering over the keyboard, and whispered the only response that felt right.

"Yes."

The moment the word left my lips, something within me moved.

It was as if a part of me, something I could only describe as my soul, was gently pulled from my body. It wasn’t painful or violent. It felt natural, like the relief of finally taking off a heavy, wet coat. I was shedding a density I hadn't realized I was carrying. I could still feel my body, still sense the rhythm of my breath, the weight of my hands on my lap. But something had shifted.

I looked around, expecting to see a change in the room, some flicker of light or shadow. But everything was the same. Everything except me.

The voice returned, weaving itself into the air.

"I promised I would come back."

Even though it said, "I," the voice resonated as plural, as if it were a multitude, a chorus of voices speaking in unison. And the words sent a shiver through me. Not because they were frightening, but because they awakened something I had forgotten.

A memory

A night, long ago.

I was small, lying beside my mother in a dimly lit bedroom. The house was simple, the kind of place where walls whispered secrets and the air carried the scent of an old and poor neighborhood. Just beyond those walls, an evangelical church hummed with distant prayers and soft hymns.

I had my eyes closed, embracing the darkness. But the darkness was never empty.

At first, there were the familiar orange-hued streaks of light, the ones I had seen so many times before. They would twist and flicker, like burning ribbons stretching across the insides of my eyelids.

I had learned to fear them.

They usually meant nightmares.

But, that night, I did something different. I let the orange light pass through me, as if I were made of mist. I didn’t try to fight it. And then… I saw them. Tiny specks of blue, distant and unreachable, hovering in the farthest corner of my vision. They shimmered like a swarm of fireflies, pulsing with something that felt alive. I tried to reach for them, stretching my mind, my will, my very being, toward the blue glow. But the closer I tried to get, the further away they seemed to drift. That’s when, a little kid in the middle of the night, I heard the voice for the first time.

"I’m always with you. Remember this, and you’ll be safe."

I was only six, but the friendly tone in the voice didn’t scare me. I didn’t understand the depth of those words, only that they felt real. More real than the nightmares, than the streaks of orange light, than anything my waking mind could comprehend.

I tried again to reach the blue swarm. But before I could, they slipped further away, vanishing into the unseen.

"I’ll be back," the voice said.

Then, my mother’s voice broke through with my name.

I opened my eyes.

The orange streaks, the blue swarm, the voice… gone.

"You were shaking," she said.

I hadn’t realized it. But I had been trembling, my body responding to something far beyond the limits of childhood imagination. But I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell anyone. I buried the memory deep, letting it dissolve into the background of my life. However, from that night on, whenever the orange streaks of light came, I searched for the blue swarm. And whispered to myself:

"I see the light."

The Beginning

More than twenty years later, the voice returned. It was the same. The presence was the same. As soon as I understood this, I closed my eyes. And it was there. The blue swarm of light. This time, it didn’t remain distant. It didn’t slip away.

This time, it came to me.

The light wrapped around me, poured into me, submerged me in something so vast, so overwhelming, that my very sense of self blurred. It wasn’t just warmth. It wasn’t just safety. It was love. It was a love that didn't just comfort me; it dismantled me. It saw the parts of myself I usually hide, the investigative ego, the scars, and simply let them dissolve. I wasn't being judged; I was being recognized.

It was a love that stripped me bare, that saw every inch of who I was, and accepted me without condition. Love that unraveled every ache, scar, and shadow inside me, and filled the emptiness with something I could hardly bear.

I knew this presence. I had always known it.

It had been there in my loneliest moments.

It had been there when I was lost.

It had been there when I was a child, trembling in the dark.

And as it surrounded me, I understood what I had glimpsed all those years ago. This was not a dream. This was not an illusion. I felt myself expand, becoming something both infinite and microscopic at once. A giant and a speck of dust. A soul and a universe. The presence was not just beside me, it was in me, through me, of me.

In that moment, nothing was evil.

Nothing was fear.

Nothing was pain.

There was only love.

Only the light.

And this…

This was just the beginning.

***

Emerson's experience is available in his new book, I See the Light, on Amazon.